“Instructions
for Living takes place in the political past that could as easily be the
future. It winds restlessly through a foreign island environment that feels
immediately familiar yet remains full of mystery. Its lyricism, framed in a
densely suggestive texture, is arrived at by implication without unnecessary
complication. A powerful and immediate portrait.”
-- Rich Ives

“Laurie Blauner's lovely story unfolds gently at first,
its striking imagery and surprising love story gradually drawing the reader
into her imagined world. As catastrophic events encroach upon that world, it is
impossible not to feel with the characters their fear, their longing to
connect, and their need to lay bare the past and shape its meaning. It is a
haunting tale that is beautifully told.”
-- Barbara Lindsay

“In sparse language, Laurie Blauner teases out the beauty
of resisting the inevitable: the end of love, the end of life, the end of the
world. At the core of her book, Instructions for Living, there is nothingness.
The novella is a testament to Blauner's remarkable skill; she has created a
narrative that dissolves rather than advances. This is a chilling story
appropriate for a world of pirate corporations, international gangs, and secret
police forces.”
-- Matt Briggs

Excerpt
from Instructions for Living

1998,
A Country Without Fish

Twenty years ago, when I was a twenty year old girl, a man with one arm
was rummaging through our garbage on a Sunday afternoon. He smelled of
gardenias.

"Yours
is the last house on the block. Do you mind?" His eyebrows were full and
level with the top of our door.

"No."
I blinked at his size.

"I
remember when there were just fields here."

He
dug his one arm, his right arm, into our garbage, bringing up grapefruit and
lemon rinds and scrap paper and ice cream cartons, reminding me of how easily
we tend to forget the recent past. Done with one thing, we can only think of
what's next. "That was a while ago," I said. "Pineapple and some
rice I've heard." He had hollow cheeks, dark hair and eyes. Handsome and
imposing and busy.

"My
father brought us armloads of pineapple sometimes."

I
could see a plain gold wedding ring on his finger flashing among the plastic
bottles, a green cardboard package nestled next to coffee filters and dirty,
paper bags. "Are you looking for something in particular?"

"Ah."
He pulled out a piece of smeared string and a small, glass spice container.
"For my little boy."

I
watched as he wrapped the string around the jar with one arm and pushed it on
the ground and wound it back up so it traced and retraced its steps. He put it
in his pants pocket where it bulged. "Where are you from?"

"Oh,
this. You mean this." He looked at his empty sleeve. "It's from
fighting when I was young, probably your age. More than fifteen years
ago."

We
both looked away, suddenly shy. I could see a streak of orange in the sky, a
redhead's strand of hair pushed away from a damp forehead. The horizon was
still scrubbed and blue. It seemed like it was just waiting for darkness. Since
that day the sky's watched men kill each other and worse. I could hear my
neighbors getting dinner ready, their voices, the silverware and plates
complaining. Their pungent spices rose into my throat.

He
took an already crushed gardenia from his shirt pocket and rolled it around in
his fist. He extended his hand. "My name is Miguel."

I
shook his large hand. My own looked shrunken in his. His fingers chafed me.
"Gabrielle," I said. I drank in the enormous size of him, the way he
was so gentle.

Later
that night I could smell gardenias as I made my parents' dinner, as I swatted
at flies. I stopped my housework and smelled. He was still with me.

1998,
Breathing Water

I
wanted to tell someone about my dream yesterday, the day I missed the hurricane
in a nearby county. But who was there left to tell? My parents were dead and
Miguel was gone.

My
father and I rested on a beautiful, lush bank where a stream snaked out from an
overgrowth of large, weeping trees and vines and thick bushes. We rested and
talked for quite a while and then I decided to explore where the stream tumbled
from. I hacked through the heavy growth with my hands until I'd made a space
and went through to discover a small pool of water with large fish hidden
there. I watched them surfacing, their tan backs bumping the air, gliding back
down beneath the water. They seemed too big for the pool but not unhappy in it.
Moving constantly, nudging the tiny ripples circling outward. I walked around
the water and returned to my father. Swarms of people came. People I didn't
know. They started going back, around the pond. Suddenly one person and then
another returned from the pond carrying the large, dead fish. Finally no fish
were left.